Martha and Rhonda

Growing up, I had no rules, no emotional support, and little advice. I raised myself. Started down the path of alcohol, drugs, partying and went missing for days. The men I dated were abusive and drugged out as me. I had no idea at the time that I was lesbian. I didn’t even know who I was. I just went by what I saw on TV and the status quo.

My mother gave me everything that I asked for materially and very little spiritually and emotionally. My father was not around much. The stories of my childhood and young adulthood are a mini-series in themselves. I’ll just say that I choose my parents for reasons I now understand. I love my mother and father. Being their child shaped a lot of who I am today. When I talk about those stories today it’s with a grace and not a definition. The story I would like to tell here is about the most influential person in my life.

The first time I saw her I was roaming around my favorite Spiritual bookstore. I often had long conversations with the folks that worked there about life, healing, spirituality and how to save the world. The woman behind the counter began to tell me about a woman she had been seeing for emotional healing work. Her name is Martha Burgess. She talked about Martha being a former actress, acting teacher and business coach. She began to tell me about the profound healing, mediumship and emotional work that happens there. She said Martha invites a small group of people to her home on Thursday nights by invitation only. I was fascinated by what she was telling me about this woman and had to meet her. In the middle of our conversation Martha Burgess walked in to pick up some books she ordered, and the rest is history. Our friendship began that day. She looked me up and down and said, Yeah you are one of us. See you Thursday night. It will be 10 years this coming November since that day.

We consider ourselves family now. So much has happened in our time together as teacher, student, mentor, coach, healer, confidant and friend over the past 10 years that it would be impossible to write it all here. Let’s just say our friendship could be compared to the story of Socrates and Og from the book The Greatest Miracle in the World, or The Karate Kid and Mr. Miyagi. I’ll do my best to share how she influenced the shaping of my character, consciousness and awareness.

Martha guided me to my true self and helped me change my perceptions of myself and the world. Some of her favorite axioms are,

“nothing is what it seems,”

“your pain is growing you,”

“don’t be overly sympathetic to what you see,”

“God presents two ways according to our understanding. God presents as the absence of itself (still God) or the fullness of itself (all God) according to the individual understanding. The energy of the absence of God is fear. The energy of the fullness of God is Love.,”

“we are uniquely wired,”

“ your divinity lies in your humanness,”

“God is all you are and Love is all you are.”

“Everything in the world is neutral. Only the egoic child’s mind judges things as good, bad, right wrong, rich, poor, ugly, beautiful and more. Everything Just Is in the energy of the Ascended God and we must learn to Cooperate with it and Create from this real place.”

“If all you can see is what you always see, there is work to be done on the self to deepen and see more.”

I would walk into her house and moan and groan about how hard is to be black, gay and female in America. I would go on about how the world and some people in my life have wronged me. My parents were messed up and insane. She then goes into how nothing is what it seems. “Nothing is what it seems. One moment leads to the next and to the next and to the next. I don’t know the mind of God, why souls meet, what their agreements are. There is always a deeper meaning or issue at play. We are living a human experience from the ego perspective the end goal is to learn through our humanness who and what we really are.” I just keep on pushing through and having faith, while attempting to work on myself and help others.

We talk for hours about the egoic child’s mind vs. the adult mind. The best way I can explain it is by relating it the way she first presented the idea to me. It’s like as a baby our first idea of God is our parents. So something happens like you bring home a piece art you made in school and your father brushes you off and tells you to go sit down he has things to do. As a child in that moment one may feel unloved or unappreciated. The reality may be he just got fired or had a hard day. But as a child we only see the brushing off. So we carry that with us and draw experiences that reinforce this idea of ourselves. My own personal experience is that my father abandoned the family many times physically. So I became afraid of being abandoned and attracted it. The adult mind knows that my father was an alcoholic and didn’t know how to live life. Knowing his issues had nothing to do with me allowed me to forgive him and release the need to be abandoned.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a woman, I set aside childish ways. Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.…” 1 Corinthians 13:11

Martha often says “We spend our whole lives trying to be loved.All the negative emotions of fear, hate, rage, resentment, jealousy are love. They are love that has become frustrated and hardened; turned into something else. Nothing can turn into something that is not at first itself. They can turn into love like water to ice and back to water. This is why all our emotions can turn into love because they are love. You are love no matter how you have distorted it. It’s time to turn all this back to its higher form because, if you don’t, it is stuck in itself and can only be that.” So, I try a little something every day by working on myself and clearing out the clutter of my emotional body. I’m attempting to bring love to everything I do. From the gifts that Martha has given me and my own individual practice of raising consciousness in me I have hope. The process for me is not an overnight sensation. However, little by little, my character moves closer in alignment to my consciousness.

8 Comments

Thank you for sharing this story so openly dear Rhonda. The diversity of the human life path is always amazing to me, and your experience with this inspiring woman is not only proof that “mothers” come in every shape and size imaginable, but also that the inner strength of an individual is far greater than the circumstances in which that person is raised. You are a spiritual warrior!

Thank you for sharing this story, Rhonda. It’s such a story of hope, trust and divine timing and I just love it! The quotes in it are so powerful. What a force you two women must be together. 🙂 I am always working on myself too and simply trying to make my space a little better than I found it and knowing that I am somehow on a path with a strong woman like you makes all the difference. Thank you, thank you!

Beautiful, Rhonda! I’m so HAPPY you shared your story and your relationship with Martha. You are a badass hilarious wise woman and I’m glad we crossed paths. Keep doing your thing and sharing your light! There is only one of you and the world is lucky to have you in it!